Bathsheba Monk's Blog, page 7

May I See Your ID?

I'm a fiction writer.  I make art out of inhabiting other people's skins and telling you what their experiences feel like.  A novelist's identity expands with every new  character who enters their interior landscape so figure in my six novels combined I have about two hundred characters.  So...who am I? Anyway, I don't believe that people find themselves as if identity is something that your fairy godmother slips into your diaper at birth. I think people create themselves by accretion. Go to war and come back with another identity keeping you company.  Get married and overhear yourself described as "my wife".  I'm going to my first reunion this year and wondering which I dread hearing:  "I didn't recognize you!" or "You haven't changed a bit!"  Frankly, you're boring if you don't add things to your identity CV. When my first publisher found out I used a pseudonym she freaked out--demanding to see my driver's license, passport, birth certificate as if my true identity would drop out of those documents. I had better be that Polish girl who narrated my fiction book, dammit! It was the first time I heard the phrase "Identity Politics" and suddenly I was an official Pollack, even though an invite to the Polish Embassy in NYC showed me I have as much to do with Polish people from Poland, as splendid as they are, as I do with the Armenian people--as splendid as they are-- down the block.  Earlier in my life, I talked to a rabbi about converting and his response was, "Why would anyone want to become a Jew?" I don't know.  I was in love with one?  I liked their taste in modern furniture and art and their political activism?  "You can never not be one, once you do this," he said.  "They won't let you. Don't limit yourself." Don't limit yourself.  That's probably why I became a fiction writer.

FIX THIS

How can it be that in our country, a man can be taken into the back of a police car with a broken leg, screaming for help, be taken from the police car a half hour later with a severed spine and crushed voice box, then die a week later AND NO CHARGES ARE FILED?  How is this any different from a lynching?  How is the righteous anger that erupts in the community as a result of this crime itself called "criminal"? And how can crimes like this be committed with increasing regularity and all over the country and no one is held accountable? Is this the United States? How can anyone talk about anything else until we fix this?

Finding my tribe

Blake had singular taste in movies...one New Year's Eve back when he and I and Charlie Sherman were spending New Year's Eves together, he forced us to watch Eraserhead, pausing the VCR if one of us escaped for a smoke so we wouldn't miss anything because we had to talk about it later--a  pleasure neither of us would deny him. He got agitated when we rode the Red Line to catch a segment of the Tartovsky Film Fest at the Harvard Film Archive because the train was SRO and he was convinced that everyone on board was going to the Tartovsky Film Fest (and not the Hong Kong Restaurant for giant scorpion bowls) and we wouldn't get in.  For him, half the fun of seeing movies at the Harvard Film Archive was talking to other members of the audience--cinema buffs or snobs depending on how much you like to laugh in movies.  Like all enthusiasms, movies accrue meaning and pleasure in the rehash. Like concerts.  Or sports.  Egads, sports.  They have entire staffs devoted to reconstructing sporting events. The pre-game show. The post-game wrap-up. It's like going to church.  Like-minded people hanging around talking about something they are all desperately interested in--living forever, the Patriots. Tartovsky. Writing. I like to talk about writing.  Not necessarily things that people have written, although sometimes, but the how of writing.  Tricks of the trade.  How other people do it. Did it. The pre-writing warm-up. The post-writing wrap up. That's my clan, the how-to-write tribe.  And the drums are beating.  Moravian Writer's Conference.

Put me in coach!

Novelists have the gift of perspicacity--undervalued at the moment as the reading landscape is clogged with information on how to live forever cancer-free-Alzheimer's-immune and in a series of satisfying relationship because OMG! we're outliving our friends--unlucky unprepared bubs who weren't on alert.  So who wants to read novelists whose big gift is to tell you how things end which is badly and pretty soon? That's why the novel is in remission. The only hopeful literature out there are extraordinary stories of ordinary people who have made it laughing and screaming through a tough part of their life to...okay, another tough part, but that's the most you can hope for isn't it: that you wake up another day still in the game. The best stories are of how real people made it without the superpowers of enormous talent or great beauty or a trust fund.  Although--the best part?-- they find out they had superpowers no one could see without the magic goggles of great writing--which is, yes, perspicacity.  Here's the ad: Blue Heron Book Works specializes in these uncommonly fine memoirs.  And here's the fun part: I will be joining my colleagues Nic Esposito, Nate Pritt and Mark Harris on June 6 at the Moravian Writer's Conference to talk about our Independent Publishing ventures and what it means to curate the culture.  I'd love to talk to you about what you're writing and maybe I can find you a pair of magic goggles that fit.        

Material World

A favorite exercise of mine for freshman composition class: your apartment burned down and with it all your clothes and you have to wear--temporarily, don't cry!--your mother's clothes.  Write about how you feel.  Most kids would rather wear a blanket.  Me too.  You too, Mom, admit it! You said Grandmom dressed like a Polish immigrant.  We define ourselves by the things we surround ourselves with, what we eat, even the people we associate with. I know a man who will only associate with attractive people.  Superficial bastard, right? A woman who will only eat organic food no GMOs for her no siree.  Snob. Are you with me? We (used loosely) all laugh at Asian tourists who flaunt clothes covered with high-end designer logos as if its magic made them polo players or Hello Kitty forever little girls.  My husband cuts the logos off his pants not wanting to be mistaken for a member of the "members only" club.  When I lived in Germany I witnessed a fad where Germans wore polo shirts with arbitrary English words embroidered on the chest--"Blackey Blackey" "English Garden"--and they proclaimed themselves multi-cultural.  The curse of first world materialism--this stuff!--and yet it's the same for all worlds.  Aboriginal people can't wear garments/colors/decorations reserved for royalty. Sumptuary laws are on the books in every culture since the ancient Greeks because stuff has meaning about who you are.  When I uprooted my life a decade ago and moved elsewhere, I would wake up for the longest time discombobulated.  Whose sheets?  The mattress creaked.  The scene out the bedroom window--trees? The books on the nightstand--I would never buy hard cover, so wasteful!  And who was that next to me?  I was a visitor in someone else's story. I'd sneak away and open my suitcase that held momentos of who I was, and what I collected from where I'd been and recite my narrative. But what did that make me? A collection of souvenirs?  It took a long time for me to imbue meaning to the new material of my life. To adjust my story and surround myself with new things that had new stories attached to them.  Because that's all stuff is--props to help you tell your story. Isn't it grand?  It always comes back to storytelling.

Squawk from the Blue Heron

Everyone's piling up on this guy:
"In today's Kindle and e-publishing environment, with New York publishing sliding into cultural irrelevance, I find questions about working with agents and editors increasingly old-fashioned.  Anyone who claims to have useful information about the publishing industry is lying to you, because nobody knows what the hell is happening.  My advice is for writers to reject the old models and take over the production of their own and each other's work as much as possible--" Ryan Boudinot writing in "The Stranger" blog.
I mostly kinda agree with him.  See, here's the thing:  there are 6 big book publishing conglomerates in the US, all of them centered in New York.  Nothing wrong with New York.  I LIKE New York. The people are friendly, smart and alive in a thrilling way because a lot of them come from elsewhere and live on their wits till they land on their feet in unimaginably tiny apartments.  But, and this is where you might disagree with me, I find everyone there kind of the same too.  Understandable: they live in the same vertical landscape, eat at the same expensive places with paleo menus and small portions, know the same kind of people who live in the same unimaginably tiny apartments.  If can't help but form the way you think, any more than living in say, Allentown, forms the way you think about cars, carbs, guns...things.  Another blog that.  I'm getting to publishing.  So everytime someone says they're sending a manuscript off to NY and "wish me luck" I always picture the person on the other end of the mail route who is opening this hard worked manuscript with their own agenda, their NY agenda, their tiny apartment and art-openings-on-Thurdsday-nights and their little-black-wardrobe agenda and I think "what the heck do you think is going to happen here?  Even if they like your worldview, what does that say about you?"  That last part is disturbing.  A part of me thinks you haven't been true to yourself if someone from New  York "gets" your worldview.  It's like you look at yourself from an alien point of view.  Pandering.  It's not everyone's club.  You've got your own damn club.  That's why I agree with Boudinot when he says NY publishing is sliding into cultural irrelevance.  It's not irrelevant to itself, of course.  But it can't speak for the 99.9% of the rest of the world either.  Everything it produces, even if it's something about say, the Nigerian experience which is hip now, squares with how New York sees the Nigerian experience and so is maybe not true in its own context.  It's the New York experience draped in mudcloth. It would be nice if a few of those 6 publishing conglomerates would operate out of places like Allentown.  The rent is cheaper.  It would expand their scope. Maybe pick up a few good manuscripts about the rest of us.  Sell lots of books.  We all like to read about ourselves.  And that's where the Blue Heron comes in.

This is my weapon, this is my gun...

..this one's for killing, this one's for fun.  It's a piggy jingle we sang in Army basic training. Most of the ditties we sang--with glee--were offensive to someone somewhere.  I was offended plenty, but in the military "offense" is a personal problem and personal problems, 'cruit, you take to the chaplain, those nice ministerial majors in jump boots and invisible wings, soft voices with the answer to exactly nothing real.  I opted out of firing my weapon in basic, women had that prerogative for a while, and I exercised that prerogative because what do you do with a gun but kill something, drill sergeant --when I was asked and I was asked all the time. I was not good for morale, standing around in my superiority pants, scoring the other 'cruits targets. That's what we're here for, 'cruit.  You're in the army.You got to learn to take orders and kill someone before they kill you or worse kill your buddies. We're saving your life, 'cruit.  I eventually did fire when they lifted the exemption--it's unworkable to have opinions in the military--I qualified expert, not sniper expert but you don't want to piss me off at twenty feet hahaha--and even now as I write that I can feel the thrill--sorry, it's a thrill--of being capable of downing someone who is attacking--of being able to save people who were unarmed on principle, thinking beautiful thoughts like, what do you do with a weapon but kill something? I never was in combat and believe me for that I am thankful.  But even in training we called the enemy names. Savages? Don't remember that but there were worse names I can't even bring myself to write.  How can you kill someone who is a human being?  You can't.  You demonize them.  You have to make them less than human.  Savages. Worse.  If you don't, then you're a psycho.  And like the American Sniper you come home and brag about it--why not--your, mine, our -- unquenchable thirst for oil is what sent you there--it's not as if you woke up and said, "it's a good day to kill some Savages!" You're not psycho. You did our dirty work. You were sent off with flags waving and children crying from the high school auditorium and people cheering "bring us back our oil. We need it to power up these computers and run these generators so we can watch this crap on television 24 hours a day and talk about the shows as if they were real life"--I'm talking news shows too--when real life is what you are walking into. Your mission is to pry the Savages' fingers off the oil pumps, hey, get them to vote on it if you can.  Smells better.  If we couldn't get that oil, we'd be screaming for the pretty little Savages' heads.  We're just lucky we still have the luxury of thinking beautiful self-righteous little thoughts like, what do you with a weapon but kill something?

Rescue Me

Mrs. Szewzcek and the Rescue Dog is my best short story...not all mine of course, it was pounded into shape by a dramatically artsy woman whose lover insisted she join our tiny (3 person) writing group in Boston me hissing protests when I got a load of her and not just because I thought she would eat all the cheese which she did but I thought she would have nothing to offer and then she sliced into Rescue Dog in its raw form articulating what I was trying to say and why it wasn't being said and where to stop it and she was right and I called out after her when she danced out of our condo down Beacon Hill "who are you?"...I had no opinion of Stephanie when she came into our family and "came into our family" is a funny phrase because she was creating her own not joining ours and when I did form an opinion it was hypocritical ignoramus which she is but just thinking those things put me square in the face of my own limitations which I won't go into here.  Love me love my limitations, I always say, but they seemed less quirky more limiting after that....I was scared of the dark long into adulthood then I met my husband who, using a few junior magic tricks--like asking me "do you believe in God, like a God who looks like Santa Claus but acts like Chucky because if you do we can't continue"--put a face on my fears and they looked a lot like failure and death and being exposed and when I could pick them out of a line-up they ran out of the darkness and I was saved.

Be it resolved...

This year I resolve to:

1.  Purge "should" from my vocabulary--I've seen evidence in myself that it's the fastest road to peace of mind.
2.  Remember that people are capable of incredible goodness and incredible evil at the same time and act accordingly.
3.  Accept the fact that the only person I can change is myself and work on that.
4.  Not get sucked into other people's dramas.  See 1, 2 and 3.
5.  Be kinder and realize that doesn't negate 4.

Morning Star

The belief bone is missing in my DNA but that never stopped me from loving Christmas which I imagine as a dark night when pure goodness enters the earth's atmosphere stunning all with its possibility.  It's hard to be good though and I've never been. My recent downfall: Those you-might-like-these-articles-if-you-liked-that-trashy-article-you-just-finished links...keep me stuck in the muck. 12 celebrities who have really crummy teeth.  11 actors you didn't know were drug addicts.  I read them all...it's like seeing a casual acquaintance in his underpants. I don't remember ever believing in Santa Claus.  I helped my overworked mother wrap presents for my many siblings till early Christmas morning ever since I can remember because I was a wrapping prodigy. Or so she said. Flattery, right? But still. My mom worked a full time job so Christmas Eves wrapping presents after the younger kids were asleep was the only time I had her to myself all year and I might have dragged it out. Insisting we take the time to heat the milk to accompany Santa's cookies which we ate right before the rest of the house awakened, just as the winter sun started to warm the day with the infinite possibility of Christmas.